This book is for the intrepid biologist in need of just enough Perl programming language to use in the analysis of biological sequences of DNA and proteins. Emphasizing good programming practices, LeBlanc (computer science, Wheaton College) and Dyer (biology, Wheaton College) introduce Perl and outline a simplified approach to programming that is directly applicable to biological sequence analysis. Most examples focus on DNA analysis. While the book is mainly for biologists, linguists experimenting with string searching to analyze texts, and enthusiasts of anagrams and other word play, may enjoy the authors' attempts to mirror language examples with DNA examples. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
This book presents Perl programming with a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective for the bioinformatics classroom. The co-authors are a professor of computer science and a professor of biology who collaborate in developing software for DNA sequence analysis. A specialty of the authors is encouraging interdisciplinary undergraduate research. The book has been tested in the classroom as a text for both biology and computer science majors. Benefiting from years of teaching experience in both computer science and biology, the authors use an exceptionally friendly and pedagogically sound introduction to Perl that emphasizes good programming practices throughout. Concepts include a rich introduction to working with strings and files of sequence data, control structures, subroutines, and data structures (e.g., arrays and hash tables). A particularly unique feature of the text is the early and repeated exposure to and use of regular expressions in sequence analysis. All examples in the book are applied to biological sequence analysis (DNA analysis, Protein analysis). The full-length book is appropriate for majors in either computer science or biology and especially relevant for new interdisciplinary courses involving students from multiple disciplines.
